


Carte Blanche

by LosingInterest



Category: Big Bang (Band)
Genre: 5 Times, 5+1 Things, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-06-30 23:42:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15762147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LosingInterest/pseuds/LosingInterest
Summary: Five times Jiyong doesn't love and one time he does.***“Don’t throw up on my bed,” Seungri warns from somewhere distant, the voice is floating above his head, blending with his pounding headache.“I’m about to do just that,” Jiyong rolls to his back, not opening his eyes yet. His skull is throbbing, his throat is dry, and his limbs are unbelievably heavy.





	Carte Blanche

**1.**

“Don’t throw up on my bed,” Seungri warns from somewhere distant, the voice is floating above his head, blending with his pounding headache.

“I’m about to do just that,” Jiyong rolls to his back, not opening his eyes yet. His skull is throbbing, his throat is dry, and his limbs are unbelievably heavy.

“I’ll kick you out,” Seungri shuffles closer, his warmth invades Jiyong’s senses with brute force, almost tearing up all the walls. “I swear.”

“Scary,” Jiyong makes an asshole reply with every intention to do so. “Ten points for trying.”

“I _swear_ , hyung.”

“Nah.”

“You don’t believe me.”

Jiyong doesn’t resist an urge to smile at that. The pride tugs in his chest like anchor, like something to hold onto, something steady that he can feel pulsing in his veins. “No, I don’t.”

“Of course you don’t,” Seungri sighs. Jiyong feels the bed gives in to another weight, knows Seungri’s palm is coming to rest on his forehead even before it does. “You don’t believe in anything but yourself.”

“Yeah,” Jiyong leans to his touch. “Damn right I don’t.”

Seungri hums absentmindedly, his hand lingers on Jiyong’s cheek for a second longer than it’s supposed to. “Are you still drunk?” he asks when Jiyong’s eyes fluttered open.

Jiyong watches him blinks, the moves of his eyelashes, the twitch of his mouth, the expression that changes from concerned, confused, and finally resting on its usual cheerful. “I never was.”

“I’d beg the contrary,” Seungri rolls his eyes at him, bouncing off of the bed and skips to the door. “Not that you’ll believe me anyway.”

“I won’t,” Jiyong reassures him, watching his back disappears.

“I made you coffee,” Seungri shouts, this time his voice is thick and thin and through.

“Don’t boss me around,” Jiyong grumbles and tangles himself with the blanket for another three minutes before following him downstairs.

 

**2.**

“Aren’t you supposed to be going outside?”

Seungri raises an eyebrow at him. “Like where?”

“Somewhere,” Jiyong shrugs, holding his mug with both of his hands, savoring the heat eventhough it’s not one hell of a winter outside. “Some place.”

“No,” Seungri frowns thoughtfully. “Not really.”

“Alright. You’re taking care of me.”

“I’m not doing a charity,” he hisses, annoyed. His forehead wrinkles and he stutters, unfolding to himself. “I’m not doing you a fucking charity.”

“I see that,” Jiyong smiles because he can. Because he is willing to and he’s been looking forward to, Seungri seething and uncomfortably fidgeting in his seat, trying to deliver a word or two. “Clearly.”

“ _Hyung_.”

“What?” Jiyong plays amusedly. “I believe you.”

“You don’t.”

“I do, sometimes.”

“No, you don’t. You never did.”

“Maybe I’m trying? Give a guy a break here, will you?”

“I need the _goddamn_ break,” Seungri stands up and starts to pace back and forth. “Please, give me a break.”

Jiyong watches him smugly. Seungri is close to touch and Jiyong can stop him from dizzying himself, from burning up with anger but he won’t. Heaven knows he won’t, even for a soul being in the bet. He’s been dying, thirst and gasping for this, dreaming; delirious, anxious, waiting. It feels like fever under his skin, creeping up, making him shudder. It feels alive. It feels like being alive.

“And how am I going to provide that?”

“Hyung,” Seungri stops on his heels, standing in front of Jiyong now, flustered and frustrated. His cheeks are red and Jiyong wants to touch them, wants to know if they are warm as they seemed to be, wants to take the rage with him, probably keeping it for a while until it worn out. Seungri’s mouth, _oh_ , he wants to catch the poison springing from it, tucked it inside his ribcage so one day when he died and someone cut him open they would see the pain, the beat that kept him breathing.

“Yes?”

“Don’t _yes_ me,” Seungri shakes his head, shaking himself off of the anger. His recent calmness emerges and Jiyong feels the thud in his chest, breaking faith and dissolving hunger.

“Was I supposed to say no?”

“No, it’s not…why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“This,” Seungri’s hand reaches out but falters halfway and rests awkwardly on his side. “We’re fighting again.”

Jiyong swallows and casts his eyes aside from Seungri to the view of magazines stacked neatly on his coffee table. “I don’t know.”

“We shouldn’t be.”

Jiyong nods. “Perhaps.”

“What do you mean perhaps?”

Jiyong looks at him, watching him waiting for the answer. “People change,” he offers him a smile.

“Not us,” Seungri says, easy. “We’re still the same.”

Jiyong can’t trust himself to speak so he doesn’t. There are so many mock offenses on the tip of his tongue they feel sour to his throat. It smells rotten, unforgiven, and even so, he wishes to let them out. He won’t, he swears. He’ll keep it in to his grave.

“Are you hungry?” Seungri touch his shoulder, tentative and hesitant. “Go order something for us.”

“I do not bend to your command,” Jiyong fishes for his phone in his pocket.

 

**3.**

“You’re not welcome to stay in my bed,” Seungri hands him another shot.

“Keep threatening me, it’s a hell of an entertainment.”

“Don’t underestimate me.”

“That’s what I’m good at.”

“The award in that category is yours.”

“Aren’t you proud of me?”

“Sure am,” Seungri yawns.

“You better.”

“Am I not always, though?”

Jiyong laughs. “Better than anyone else?”

“Proud of you,” Seungri tells him unabashedly, eyes glinting with honesty. “You ought to know that by now.”

“Uh–huh, I’m not blind.”

“You’re not,” Seungri smiles. “You just don’t always believe me.”

“I still don’t.”

“Will you? One day?”

“Not a chance,” Jiyong assures him, taking another swig of his drink. “You’re out of luck.”

“You will.”

“Don’t push,” Jiyong purrs, leaning to his side until their shoulders touching. “Don’t ask.”

Seungri snorts but gives away nothing.

“Don’t even try,” Jiyong lets himself being tucked in.

 

**4.**

“Just me.”

Jiyong inhales deeply, greedy for the air. His lungs are threatening to burst, his throat is a desert. His fingers are trembling and thankfully, he’s clutching onto the sheets, not anywhere else. Not Seungri.

“What are you,” Jiyong rasps as soon as he finds his voice.

“Seungri,” comes the answer from behind him.

“What is Seungri though,” Jiyong is running out of jokes and sarcasm, he is running out of himself.

Seungri doesn’t find it amusing –or worth fighting for at three forty five in the morning –either but he doesn’t comment on it. “It’s just me.”

“I know,” Jiyong swallows and swallows until he can clutch onto the scraps of courage he manages to find inside him. His eyes are burning but they’re not watery. Good. Everything’s good.

“Sleep,” Seungri shuffles closer, close enough to touch, not that they will. He doesn’t wrap his arm around Jiyong’s waist or press his palm on Jiyong’s spine. He doesn’t send any kind of signal that will make Jiyong inch even further and stumble down to the floor. He closes his eyes so he cannot see the slow regain of Jiyong’s composure, the build of his chamber’s walls that keep him inside his steady throne.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Jiyong whispers after a while. He turns to lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, hand roaming on the sheet until it brushes Seungri’s bare kneecap. He yawns.

 

**5.**

“You’re killing yourself,” Seungri pats his bedhead and fails to make it presentable.

“There’s no better way to go,” Jiyong huffs smoke, watching it dissipates into nothing, fascinated.

“It’s too early for poetry.”

“I’m too young to die.”

“Touché,” Seungri clicks his tongue, half annoyed.

Jiyong flicks his cigarette, the ashes rest on the plate he stole from Seungri’s cupboard. “That’s my asset.”

“Feelings?”

“That’s what keeping us going, kid.”

“Yours, not mine.”

“You just need to learn more words.”

Seungri shrugs. “I don’t think that’s the right way to see it.”

“Then you just _didn’t_ see it.”

“I saw many things.”

“Yet you said it’s not how it was?”

Seungri’s eyebrows wrinkle, as always when he’s forming a thought. His mouth parts open and close three times. “You’re right, I need to learn more words.”

“And write,” Jiyong takes a long drag, his chest is puffed with pride then deflates with loss. “I don’t think you’ll be as good as me though.”

“I won’t,” Seungri agrees lightly, no malice hidden. “I’m not that good in hiding surprise.”

“You’re calling me out on my bullshit?”

“No.”

“Sounded so.”

“You don’t see things the way I do,” Seungri strikes and the asshole has the audacity to smile at his elder. “Not about you, at least.”

“We are different,” Jiyong scolds him. “Seungri,” he adds because he can.

“That’s why,” Seungri takes it, takes the way it’s a distance and a comfort. It’s his memento after all, and judging by the way it still takes weight in Jiyong’s voice, it’s still Jiyong’s too. “You’re better in keeping things.”

“I’m not,” Jiyong retorts. “I let things slip away too easily.”

“Not feelings,” Seungri reminds him although neither forget.

“Don’t make conclusion,” Jiyong murmurs then looks away bravely.

 

**+1.**

“How do you make an ending?” Seungri leans forward to read better. His forehead is dripping sweat, he is fanning himself. The studio is empty but not quiet.

Jiyong draws a fat line with his sharpie right under the last sentence. “Like that.”

“How do you even know _how_ to end it?”

“You would too if you’re not this stupid.”

“Ish,” Seungri scoffs. “I’m not.”

“Not always, just mostly.”

“Okay. My question still stands.”

“My answer is still none.”

“Come on!”

Jiyong shoves him away. “It’s a song, it has to end at some point, sweetheart.”

“Don’t call me that,” Seungri grumbles.

“You asked for it.”

“No, I didn’t,” Seungri looks pleased with himself. “So, how did you know that it’s _the_ end?”

“Things end, duh.”

“Which part?”

“You’re annoying,” Jiyong throws him a pen. “Sweetheart.”

“It’s hard for me, you know, when I wrote,” Seungri pouts, annoyed with himself too. “When it’s real, when it’s –it’s about me. I wanted to keep going, I –I wanted to…” he blinks. “I don’t know.”

“Things are good for you.”

“They _are_ not.”

“Then what’s so hard about finding an end?” Jiyong reaches for another spotless paper. Plain yellow, he decides. “Just write a segment. Like that one time you were dumped by your first crush.”

“It was dumb.”

“Damn right. It’ll sell.”

“And we’re still friends.”

“You are dumb.”

“So it didn’t really end.”

Jiyong shakes his head. “Whatever.”

“Things don’t end.”

“Some things have to.”

“Like what?” Seungri’s words are caught, busted. He apologies softly.

“Many things,” Jiyong flips the page of his Japanese dictionary, looking for an empty place to put the hurt in. Maybe it’ll find a description, someday.

“And if they don’t? If it doesn’t?” Seungri asks, trying not to excuse himself from the topic.

“Don’t say,” Jiyong shushes him. He knows, he does. He doesn’t believe in anything, his faith is not something to hope for.

Seungri nods, his heart is disappearing inside him. He doesn’t reach for it, no matter how. There are things that perish, things that better to never surface. Like war. Like poverty. Like this.

“You can’t,” Jiyong draws him into a hug, stroking his hair.

Seungri hums his acknowledgement and he doesn’t say anything to anybody. Not to Jiyong’s beating heart, especially. “Okay.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Seungri gasps, astounded. “You make it sound bad.”

“Isn’t it, though?”

“No.”

“Hmm.”

“Sometimes.”

Jiyong hums again, softer.

“It’s not bad,” Seungri is determined to show him, the urge to do so leaves him breathless.

“Don’t be so quick to give,” Jiyong leans forward and lends his strength. His lips brush Seungri’s in the most polite manner, a shield. “Don’t be so quick to take it back either,” he kisses, careful, close to a farewell, near enough to a hello. The world is going to crash down as soon as it catches up with them. Time is relative, fortunately.

“Okay,” Seungri holds himself until he is not shivering. “Trying.”

“Dumbass,” Jiyong praises him and lets it sink until Seungri smiles.

“Don’t judge me like that,” Seungri laughs and laughs and gives in.


End file.
